


(we'll all be) portions for foxes

by itaintbabyshampoo



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Always Female Katya Zamolodchikova, Always Female Trixie Mattel, Doctors AU, F/F, Have you ever watched greys anatomy?, Lesbian AU, a hospital fic with very little to do with medicine lol, katyas in her 30s, they're all female unless stated otherwise, trixies in her 20s
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-11-01 04:58:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17860739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itaintbabyshampoo/pseuds/itaintbabyshampoo
Summary: “Right. Katya. Look, last night was fun and everything, but I start a new job today and well, I’m already running late. So, I’m going to go upstairs, shower, and by the time I’m ready, you’ll be gone, and I’ll just be an incredibly beautiful stranger. Okay?”(The one in which the newly qualified Dr Trixie Mattel does not just remain as a beautiful stranger. Like, at all.)





	1. skeletons? in my closet?

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I really didn’t want to write my essay for university, so I procrastinated by writing this instead. 
> 
> It’s based very loosely off the first episode of Grey’s Anatomy but I’ve used British medical terms here because I understand them better than the American system lol, but it could be set anywhere really. 
> 
> FYI:  
> 1) Junior doctor = newly graduated from medical school aka fresh meat.  
> 2) Registrar = still a junior doctor but have completed their 2 foundation training years and are beginning to specialise.  
> 3) Consultant = have fully completed their training in a particular field of medicine aka top dog.
> 
> I am not a doctor so all procedural (as well as grammatical) errors are my own. Enjoy!

Trixie is shocked awake by the shrill, insistent ringing of her iPhone alarm clock. Her head is pounding in time with the beeping and her mouth is so dry that her tongue feels like it’s cemented to the roof of her mouth, but she can feel her cheek resting in a tiny puddle of her own drool. She’s also pretty sure that she’s currently lying naked on the hardwood floor of her new living room despite having a perfectly good bed upstairs, but as snippets of the night before begin to come back to her she feels too hungover to open her eyes and confirm.

There’s a grunt from besides her and oh yeah, _that._ Trixie’s made many decisions in her life, but she thinks this might be her worst one yet. Picking random women up in bars is both her favourite past-time and her biggest character flaw. She’s due to start her first shift as a newly qualified junior doctor in less than two hours and here she is, lying naked in her own living room amongst boxes of her belongings she still hasn’t unpacked, next to a completely fucked-out stranger who’s name she can’t quite remember. 

She silences her alarm and checks the time on her phone. 7.03am. _Fuck._ She’s due to be present and correct on the ward in seventy-two minutes and she’s pretty sure that she’s sweating tequila and lime as well as salt out of her pores.

Trixie stands up and tries to ignore her spinning vision, throws a blanket from the sofa around her naked body and clears her throat loudly, but the blonde woman on her floor doesn’t stir. She can see an angry red mark in the shape of her hand on the blonde’s right ass cheek and for a second she contemplates leaning down and biting it, adding insult to injury, but decides that she definitely does not have the time to indulge in that fantasy. Instead Trixie prods the woman in her toned arm with the tip of her big toe. 

“Hey, um, Katie-” 

“It’s Katya,” the woman grumbles into the hardwood, clearly awake now, voice rough with sleep. Trixie stops poking her with her foot, almost loses her already precarious balance as she wiggles her ankle in mid-air. 

“Right. Katya. Look, last night was fun and everything, but I start a new job today and well, I’m already running late. So, I’m going to go upstairs, shower, and by the time I’m ready, you’ll be gone, and I’ll just be an incredibly beautiful stranger. Okay?” she hopes she doesn’t sound too harsh, but in her vast experience of picking women up from bars she’s realised that it’s better to be straight up than to be left dealing with a cling-on. 

“Yeah, don’t sweat it sweets. I remember where the door is,” Katya laughs and rolls over onto her back. She’s still stark naked and without the added benefit of a blanket, her nipples look like they could cut the glass of Trixie’s new coffee table. Her heavy black eye-shadow from the night before has faded to a dark navy and Trixie can see where little particles of the pigment clog together in Katya’s tiny laugh lines. The sun filtering in through the window catches in Katya’s hair and makes her rogue curls look like honey coloured silk. Trixie thinks she’s beautiful, even with red lipstick staining her chin. She dreads to think what she looks like.

“Okay good,” Trixie says and makes a start to ascend the stairs of her house on legs that still feel that drunk sort of shaky. She thinks about asking Katya for her number, wouldn’t mind hanging out naked and smashed with her on a Tuesday night again, but thinks better of it. Trixie’s never liked loose ends and sees no point in creating one here based on her own lust. There’s plenty of willing women in the city, anyways. She gives Katya a half-hearted wave and a lop-sided smile as she clutches the blanket to her chest, wearing it like a cape as if Katya hadn’t seen or licked all over her naked body a few hours earlier.

“See you around, Trixie!” She hears Katya yell from the living room as she nears the top-floor landing. She should feel guilty that Katya remembered her name when she couldn’t do the same for her, but the volume of Katya’s shout and the following echo makes her wince and her brain quickly makes the assertion that she’s going to need a Berocca or five to make it to lunchtime, never mind through a twelve-hour shift. 

\- - - - - 

She stands in front of the bathroom mirror as she waits for the shower to heat up; there’s a reason Trixie got this grand old house so cheaply - everything in it is on its last legs, the plumbing included. It doesn’t bother her that she’s basically living in the house that Jack; she figures that her shift-patterns at the hospital will be so heavy that she’ll be mostly unconscious during the time she will get to spend at home anyway. What does it matter that her boiler might short circuit and blow the entire place to the high heavens when she won’t even be around to see it?

Trixie inspects her neck and thanks God that there are no hickey’s in sight: scrubs hide a multitude of sins, but she learnt the hard way during medical school that harsh blood bruises on her pale skin unfortunately don’t make the cut. She spins around and sees a few angry red scratch marks running down her back but is relieved to see that that’s the extent of the previous night’s lust-fuelled damage. 

She washes her hair quickly under the weak trickle of tepid-at-best water from the shower head with no time for her usual nourishing conditioning routine and accepts that her bleach damaged split ends will unfortunately live to fight another day. 

Trixie is out of the shower and sliding down her hallway on wet feet towards her bedroom in record time. She blasts her hair with her hair dryer until its only slightly damp, pulls it up in a high ponytail and digs through the suitcases strewn around the room until she finds the one housing all her clean underwear. Trixie throws on leggings and a jumper and silently thanks the health board for classing it a health and safety risk to wear her hideous mint green scrubs outside of the hospital; she throws them into her rucksack to change into later. Trixie thinks about doing her usual full face of make-up but settles instead for a tinted moisturiser, some mascara and mango flavoured lip-balm; there’s always tomorrow, when she won’t be hungover and running late.

Trixie has just enough time to swallow down an over-ripe banana and half a glass of Berocca before she must leave and start her journey to the hospital. It’s early August and the city is steeped in a sticky sort of heat even at 7.45am, so she forgoes a jacket and throws her heavy rucksack over a shoulder and takes the stairs two at a time down to the front door. She locks her door and walks around to the side of the house where she’s left her newly purchased city bike chained up to the gutter. 

Trixie’s failed her driving test three times; technically it should be four times, but on her fourth attempt she gave up halfway through after reversing into a post-box and just got out of the car and walked away without ever receiving a final score. She could take the bus to the hospital but figures the bike will do her bank balance and her glutes wonders in the long run, even if the cycle route to the hospital is mostly flat terrain. Plus, the bike has pink metal framework with a baby yellow seat and she’s sort of in love with the whole Lelli Kelly fantasy it gives her. If she wasn’t so worried about appearing professional, she’d have put pink tassels on the handle bars by now. 

Trixie cycles out of her garden, tries not to focus on the killer thigh chaffing the bicycle seat is already giving her even through her Lyrca leggings, and does her best to swallow down the nerves she’s mostly managed to ignore for the past five years of medical school.

\- - - - - 

Trixie arrives at St. Fillan’s Royal Free Hospital at three minutes past eight, out of breath, sweaty, and wondering why the fuck she put a wool jumper on this morning. She chains her bike up at the metal racks next to a long line of other bicycles and double checks that she’s locked her little pink padlock properly; she won’t receive her first pay cheque until the end of August and she doesn’t have enough money to add a stolen bike into the already unbalanced financial equation.

St Fillan’s is one of the most imposing buildings Trixie has ever seen; it’s brutalist style architecture of harsh concrete blocks makes her understand why some people have a fear of hospitals. It’s not the hospital she did her training in; she attended medical school in a different city but came to St Fillan’s after being accepted to the programme here. Luckily for her though, she runs no risk of getting lost in the massive building; her first rotation is in the accident and emergency department and she can see the massive red and white sign indicating its location from where she’s standing. 

Trixie’s always prided herself on being confident; she was confident that she’d get into medical school and confident that if she worked hard she would get to exactly where she stands now, and the world would become her oyster. But right now, standing in the carpark under the blazing morning sun, her confidence isn’t just wavering, it’s crashing down around her. She can feel sweat running down her back and clinging to the wool of her jumper and her nearly empty stomach is rolling, although she thinks the latter might just be the lingering effects of her tequila-induced hangover. 

Trixie gives herself thirty seconds to feel nervous, closes her eyes and counts them down in her head. She practices the calm breathing routine she learned during her psychiatry rotation in medical school and uses the heat from the sun overhead to pretend that she’s on a beach somewhere, covered in sun cream and sand, with a fruity cocktail in hand. 

She snaps back to reality once her thirty seconds are up and starts the short walk to the entrance of the accident and emergency department. She knows roughly where the staff changing room is located, remembers it from being show on her induction day earlier in the week, which she attended along with all the other newly graduated junior doctors soon to be starting at St Fillan’s. 

She uses her ID card to beep herself into the room, which for the record, she hates with a passion and would try to lose if it wasn’t her key to accessing the majority of the hospital. The lady in charge of taking the photos was the sourest looking individual Trixie thinks she’s ever met, and when she’d blinked just as the flash went off, the lady had refused to take another picture and told Trixie that she was stuck with what she had. If Trixie saw anyone looking the same way she did in her photograph, she’d admit them to the hospital straight away on the suspicion of a stroke. Her little ID card will be getting kept firmly in her scrub pants pocket unless otherwise called for. 

The changing room is busy and is filled with people she supposes are brand new to the hospital just like she is. Trixie recognises one of the women leaning against the metallic grey lockers from her induction; she thinks her name is Maxine. She considers taking the locker next to her and trying to strike up conversation, but Maxine is almost the same pallid colour as the metal and looks like she’s seconds away from vomiting all over herself so Trixie steers clear, nudges herself and her backpack through the busy space and heads to the back of the room. 

She picks one of the overhead lockers and strips out of her jumper and leggings to change into her scrubs. They’re a little bit tighter than she had wanted them to be, but they’d ran out of mediums on her induction day, so she’d had to settle for the smaller size in the interim. Trixie’s proud of her ass but feels there’s a time and a place to showcase it and this really isn’t it. She unties then ties the laces of her trainers in a bid to discretely do a few experimental squats on the tile floor to make sure the cotton-polyester blend trousers won’t tear clean up her ass the minute she steps out of the changing room. Trixie’s retying the laces of her right trainer when she hears a breathy laugh from behind her and throws her head over her shoulder to find the source. 

There’s a tall woman leaning against the row of lockers next to Trixie’s. She’s wearing the same mint green scrubs as Trixie, indicating that she’s also a junior doctor, although where the colour of them washes Trixie out completely, it makes a beautifully vibrant contrast against the woman’s dark skin.

Trixie realises she’s still crouched on the floor staring at this woman as she stretches an arm out to Trixie. Trixie grabs the hand offered to her.

“I take it they gave you the small size scrubs as well then?” The woman laughs as she hauls Trixie back up into a standing position. 

“Were my sly squats really that obvious?” Trixie chuckles as she smooths down the fabric of her shirt and reaches into her backpack for her stethoscope. It’s hot pink, and other than her house it’s the most expensive thing she’s ever bought. 

“Well, yeah,” Trixie pulls a face of mock mortification as the woman reaches into her own locker beside Trixie’s, “but only because I did the exact same thing before you got here. Your secret’s safe with me, don’t worry.”

The two women make conversation whilst they wait for their superiors to show up and split them into their rotation groups. She learns that the woman is called Roberta but goes by Bob as they make passing comments about their other colleagues who are currently all in varying states of distress in the locker room. Other than herself, Trixie thinks Bob is the most confident person she’s met today, but with Maxine as her only competition so far, she doesn’t have much to compare to. 

The mood in the room becomes more subdued the closer the clock ticks to 8.15 and by the time the two hands reach 8.17, Trixie can physically feel the unease rolling off her new colleagues. Trixie’s earlier nerves are pitching to come back in full swing and she’s still sweating a little under her scrubs, but Bob appears completely calm and simply offers Trixie a chunk of the breakfast cereal bar she’s been chewing on. Trixie declines, but thanks her for the offer anyway. She hopes Bob’s on the same rotation as her but even if she isn’t, Trixie can see the pair of them becoming fast friends, something which she’s been sorely lacking since moving to the city ten days ago. 

\- - - - -

Trixie and Bob are chatting animatedly about the pros and cons of a reality television series that they both watch when their superiors finally enter the changing room at 8.21am, and an immediate silence falls over the entire room so quickly that it makes the little blonde hairs on Trixie’s arms stand up of their own accord. Trixie thinks she can see Maxine shaking under the harsh lights and the even harsher stares of the more experienced doctors as they stand at the front of the room, dressed in their emerald green scrubs signifying their elevated status. Trixie knows even before they’ve introduced themselves that these doctors are the Registrars who will be responsible for making sure that the likes of herself, newly qualified with spades of ego, don’t massively fuck up and accidentally kill someone or wrongly amputate a leg. Trixie is reminded very swiftly that she’s not the big fish in a small pond that she was in her final year of medical school – she’s now a bit of microscopic sea sponge floating in the ocean.

“Ladies and gentlemen, good morning! Welcome to the first day of the rest of your lives,” says the red-headed doctor, her warm, wide smile showcasing little crooked teeth. She’s too cheery for this time in the morning, but Trixie thinks she has a nice lilt to her voice even if it seems too loud for the small room. 

“I’m Dr Jinkx Monsoon, one of the A&E registrars here at St Fillan’s. My colleagues here are Dr Sharon Needles and Dr Sasha Velour,” Dr Monsoon gestures first to the stern looking blonde on her right, and then to the bald woman on her left. Trixie’s never seen someone with such a smooth head; it’s managing to reflect the glare of the overhead lights and she can’t stop staring at it. 

“If we call your name, that means you’re on our service! I’ll go first then shall I,” says Dr Monsoon. She calls the names of her group and they disappear out into the big bad world soon after. Trixie isn’t in her group; she’s kind of sad about it, Dr Monsoon seemed friendly and the lesser of the evils currently still stood in front of her, but she decides not to judge the other doctors too quickly, appearances aren’t always everything. Bob wasn’t in Dr Monsoon’s group either which Trixie is grateful for. 

It transpires that neither herself nor Bob are on Dr Velour’s service either, and after she’s led her merry band of scared looking followers out of the room it leaves only Trixie, Bob and two others she doesn’t recognise with the severe looking Dr Sharon Needles. She’s blonde, big lipped and has a laser-focused stare that Trixie thinks could cut through concrete. 

“Okay, so I should have Roberta, Trinity, Blair and Beatrice?” Dr Needles reads their names from the list and then looks at them expectantly; everyone nods back in the affirmative. 

“Oh, it’s Trixie actually,” says Trixie, smiling at Dr Needles for good measure. 

“Well, it says Beatrice here.” The registrar responds, flat and unimpressed. 

“Well, yeah, that is technically my name. I’ve gone by Trixie since I was about ten though,” Trixie responds, smiling awkwardly. She’s only telling this woman her name for crying out loud, but she already feels like she’s trying to avoid stepping on a hidden landmine. 

“Yeah, whatever. I don’t need your life story-” she peers down at her list, “- Dr Mattel. Follow me ladies,” says Dr Needles, shutting Trixie down completely. Trixie turns to look at Bob to ask her what the fuck just happened, but all Bob can do is shrug and offer Trixie a sympathetic smile. Maybe Dr Needles has a hangover too.

All through medical school, Trixie had heard horror stories about insufferable registrars who had made it their mission to make junior doctors lives hell for no other reason than that they could, and it would appear to be just her luck to be paired up with one of the creatures from those tall tales. As she follows Dr Needles out of the changing room and into the accident and emergency department, Trixie can only hope that the Consultant doctor she must shadow for this rotation of her programme will be friendlier, or at least more approachable, which at this point in time wouldn’t be a hard feat for them to accomplish. 

\- - - - - 

Trixie, along with Bob, has been scheduled in to work her shift in the minor injuries area of the A&E department and the first hour passes without incident. Dr Needles give them a quick walk-round of the department, how the filing system works and where to find everything they’ll need, and despite their rocky start Trixie hasn’t had any more run ins with the blonde, choosing to keep her big mouth shut and nod along to Dr Needles’ words instead. 

She’s just finishing up stitching the tip of young man’s index finger back together in the side room when Bob pops her head in the door. Trixie bins her used gloves and throw-away plastic apron, washes her hands in the little sink, and excuses herself.

“So, our consultant has finally shown up; she wants to do a ward round in five. Thought I’d come find you and let you know before another member of St Fillan’s staff seizes the opportunity to chew your head off before we even reach lunchtime,” Bob laughs and sticks her tongue out as Trixie playfully punches her on the arm. 

“Okay sweet I’ll be there in a minute, let me just finish up in here and get his discharge papers sorted.” 

\- - - - - 

Trixie’s waiting by the nurse’s station for the illusive A&E consultant she’ll be shadowing for the next eight weeks to show up with the rest of her little co-hort. A larger lady with a booming laugh – Nurse Royale – keeps offering her chocolates from a large box she’s hidden under the countertop of the station; she’s desperate to take one but doesn’t for fear of being caught eating on the hospital floor. Bob however, doesn’t have the same qualms as Trixie, and has shovelled no less than four into her mouth in the past two minutes. 

Trixie’s laughing at Bob telling Nurse Royale to hide the chocolates otherwise she’ll never stop eating them when she sees her approaching. Trixie thinks she might be hallucinating, that maybe her hangover was somehow so much worse than she thought it was and she’s still drunk. Her laugh dies out and she blinks hard. Twice. 

Nope, she’s not dreaming. There, walking towards her alongside Dr Needles, is Katya. The same Katya who was lying naked on her living room floor this morning. The same Katya who not even twelve hours ago had her head between Trixie’s legs, making her see stars and swear up at the ceiling. Katya hasn’t seen her yet, is too busy looking at the patient charts in her hands, but Trixie fully wants the ground to open beneath her feet and swallow her whole where she stands. This cannot be happening, it just can’t be. Trixie’s never been a believer in running from her problems but right now she would run so fast and so far that she’d need the inhaler she keeps in her bathroom cabinet for animal dander related emergencies.

She yanks the sleeve of Bob’s scrubs and tries to signal her distress with her eyes, blinking twice because she is definitely, without a doubt, in trouble. Bob just looks understandably confused and continues chewing her chocolate. 

“Me. Katya. Last night. Drunk. Fucked. Straight ahead.” Trixie whispers out through gritted teeth, still gripping the sleeve of Bob’s shirt. Bob looks from Trixie and then straight ahead, eyes landing on Katya as she and Dr Needles arrive at a stop in front of the pair of them. Trixie knows this is too much information to give out to a stranger she met two and a half hours ago, but stress has long been known to make people do strange things. 

“Hi, I’m Dr Katherine Zamolodchikova, and I’ll be your consultant here in A&E,” Katya says, still without having looked up from the files in her hands. She’s wearing black, thick-rimmed glasses that in literally any other situation Trixie would find adorable, but right now she’s rooted to the spot unable to think about anything other than the fact that she’s seen her boss naked. Katya’s long hair is pulled back in a severe bun and in place of scrubs, she’s wearing a white blouse and black slack pants. 

“But you can call me Katya!” She yells enthusiastically, almost dropping the loose sheets of paper everywhere. After what feels like an eternity, Katya finally flicks her eyes up towards the two women in front of her, her gaze immediately landing on a frozen Trixie.

“Trixie! What the-” Katya half yells in shock or possibly surprise, before she realises her mistake in letting the fact that she already knows Trixie’s name slip to anyone listening. 

Trixie can’t breathe. Bob snorts a laugh and almost chokes on her remaining piece of chocolate by trying to cover it up as a cough; the metaphorical penny has apparently finally dropped. Sharon just looks between the three of them, eyeing Trixie suspiciously. 

Oh, fuck her life.


	2. put your hands into the fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“No, Katya. I’m not the girl in the bar anymore, and neither are you. We should just pretend like this never happened.”_
> 
> _“Would you rather we went bowling instead?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my gosh, thank you for all the love you guys have shown this so far!!! it makes me feel very warm and mushy xxx 
> 
> i've re-wrote this chapter what feels like a million times and i'm still not happy with it, but this is as good as it's probably going to get and i am ready to accept that lol 
> 
> as always, all mistakes (grammatical and medical) are my own. pls enjoy!!! x

Trixie has never witnessed a car crash, or a plane crash, or any type of horrific collision really, but she imagines that this is what it must be like.  
  
  
Logically Trixie knows time hasn’t stopped or even slowed down, but to her the few seconds since Katya blurted her name out have stretched on longer than her entire existence so far. No one has said anything and the bustling sounds of the busy A&E department buzz in her ears like a jet engine flying overhead. Bob is still spluttering on her chocolate infused saliva, Needles is looking at Trixie like she’s the physical manifestation of gum stuck on her shoe and Katya? Well, Trixie will give it to her; unlike herself, Katya has made a miraculous recovery from her shock of three seconds ago and now appears to be smirking ever so slightly, her cheek bones pushing the frames of her chunky glasses further up her slim face. Trixie still can’t breathe. She is _mortified_.  
  
  
It’s not that she’s never had the awkward ‘we’ve seen each other naked and exchanged various bodily fluids’ run-in before. She’s a grown woman with needs; her needs being a somewhat insatiable sex-drive and a desire to maybe not be alone for her whole life. When you sleep with a large percentage of a city’s lesbian and bisexual women, it’s pretty unavoidable. But this? This is different. Trixie has truly outdone herself; she’s slept with her _boss’_ boss, and despite everything the only thought running through her stupid sex-crazed brain is the thought of her burning red hand print etched into Katya’s ass cheek from earlier that morning. If the ground doesn’t hurry up and swallow her soon, she is fully getting a lobotomy after this.  
  
  
It’s been about six seconds and Trixie’s beginning to think her medical career is careening towards a cliff edge when a grey-haired angel appears at her side, smelling strongly of vomit and talking at a million miles a minute.  
  
  
“Oh my gosh, I am terribly sorry I’m late! It’s just that the man in bed twelve threw up all over me, and well I had to go change, but you see I couldn’t find my pass key to get into the locker room and I –” Dr Needles pulls her laser focus away from Trixie and zones in on Max instead, “– I’ll, well, you get the picture. Sorry, again.”  
  
  
Trixie silently thanks the Lord for Maxine Malaphany’s conception, birth and medical school education, and for derailing the undeniable car crash the last few seconds had been. She does sort of wish Maxine wouldn’t stand so close to her though; she’s positive she can still see chunks of someone else’s stomach lining on Maxine’s trainers.  
  
  
“I think that would be wise, Dr Malaphany,” interjects Dr Needles patronisingly. Maxine shrinks in on herself and Trixie is selfishly thankful at not being the only one on the receiving end of Dr Needles’ sharp oral blows.  
  
  
“Well, now that the whole gang is here, let’s get moving and grooving, shall we?” says Katya as she shuffles the papers in her hands and pushes her glasses further up the bridge of her nose.  
  
  
As Dr Needles, Bob and Maxine turn to walk, Katya gives Trixie a loaded smile, all white teeth and glee. Trixie’s mouth goes dry.  
  
  
Katya leads them off from the nurse’s station and they all follow behind her as though she is some sort of very toned, very blonde and very tanned Pied Piper. Try as she might to act the consummate professional, a part – and a big part at that – of Trixie’s mind can’t stop running Katya’s big smirking smile on loop in her lust-addled little brain.  
  
  
  
  
 - - - - -  
  
  
  
  
Ward rounds in the emergency department are nothing like the ward rounds Trixie did whilst shadowing in medical school and the newness of it all makes her uncomfortable. The accident and emergency department acts like a bottle neck for the wider breadth of the entire hospital; all they’ve done so far is follow Katya from bed to bed, listened to her asses the individual cases and discuss with Dr Needles whether she believes they need to be admitted to the hospital or not. As a junior doctor, Trixie doesn’t have the authority to make those decisions so all she can do is stand quietly, listen, and pray that neither Needles or Katya ask her questions designed to test her medical school education in front of her contemporaries. Trixie’s smart; she worked her ass of for her degree, but right now she’s rattled and figures it’s a safer bet to keep her mouth closed.  
  
  
They’re on the last bed in the department, having discussed and agreed to admit a man who’s swallowed six copper coins just for fun, when the shit hits the fan. Again.  
  
  
“Dr Mattel, could I have a quick word please?” says Katya very nonchalantly, very _‘I definitely didn’t make you come so hard you almost cried last night’_.  
  
  
Trixie’s turning on her heels and making to leave back to the minor injury unit so quickly that she almost doesn’t hear Katya over the hustle and bustle of the A&E. She looks back around at Katya, head cocked to the side with the capped tip of her pen pressing into her lips. Dr Needles looks even more suspicious than she did before, and Trixie thinks about just running away; bolting out of the hospital doors and never returning, medical degree be damned.  
  
  
“Sure, yeah,” she replies instead, and follows behind Katya towards the door to a stairwell.  
  
  
The stairwell is cold; it’s such a hot day that the air conditioning is blasting at full pelt everywhere in the hospital, and Trixie rubs her bare arms to dispel the goose bumps that have risen there.  
  
  
Katya’s staring at Trixie and Trixie’s staring at the ceiling. She twiddles with her stethoscope around her neck and hopes that either Katya hurries up and gets on with whatever she wants to say, or that a tile falls out of the half roof above her head and sweeps her clean off of this mortal coil; either way she’d be content.  
“So… Beatrice. You said your name was Trixie,” says Katya coyly.   
  
  
“Well Katherine, you said your name was Katya.” Trixie replies, finally looking up at Katya. The overhead fluorescent strip lighting makes her eyes look bluer than the seafoam green they had appeared the night before.  
  
  
“Checkmate, Dr Mattel. I guess we’re both liars then.” Katya laughs, and it echoes around the vacant stairwell. Trixie can see Bob’s head through the small window in the door separating them from the A&E floor, attempting to peer in at the two of them from far off.  
  
  
“Look Dr Zamolodchikova, what do you want? I really need to get back to the floor,” Trixie says, crossing her arms over her chest; Katya’s eyes follow Trixie’s arms to her bust and then flick back up to her face slowly. She doesn’t need to get back to the floor; nurse Royale had only just been commenting on how strangely quiet the department has been this shift.  
  
  
“Oh, so it’s Dr Zamolodchikova now? It was Katya last night.” Katya leans against the wall and twirls her chewed pen between her fingers, the picture of nonchalance.  
  
  
“Yeah well, you weren’t my boss last night. God, this is so inappropriate!” Trixie shout-whispers; she’s too tired for this.  
  
  
“Inappropriate? No, no, no - this is fate, Beatrice Mattel.”  
  
  
Trixie wants to bash her head off the wall till her brain scrambles; she’ll do anything to make this whole secret stairwell conversation shrivel up and die like the flowers she tries desperately to keep alive on her kitchen windowsill to no avail. She doesn’t know why she feels so wound up about this; Trixie enjoys a good tease as much as the next girl, and usually she’s all for it, but this is different. The career she fought so hard for is worth more than the warm feeling she gets deep in her gut from Katya’s attention.  
  
  
“Look I – we, we can’t do this, okay? Dr Needles already hates me, I don’t need you adding extra fuel to the fire, so please let’s just forget that last night ever happened and move on. Perfect strangers remember?” Trixie tries to reason but it’s clear from Katya’s shit-eating grin that the message hasn’t set in, has barely even scratched the surface of whatever is going on in her blonde head.  
  
  
“So, how about dinner? Friday night?” Katya says it with such confidence, completely disregarding Trixie’s feeble attempt at an excuse – she almost agrees immediately, some weird Pavlovian part of her brain kicking into action before she manages to stop herself. It feels plain wrong to Trixie, denying Katya like this despite her insistence on some sort of weird cosmic connection between them.  
  
  
“No, Katya. I’m not the girl in the bar anymore, and neither are you. We should just pretend like this never happened,” sighs Trixie; Katya really is beautiful, even with her hair scraped back into a severe bun and her stupidly chunky glasses gracing her face. Trixie can feel her already weak resolve crumbling like almost-dry clay anytime she looks the woman in the eyes.  
  
  
“Would you rather we went bowling instead?” Katya asks, and Trixie thinks she’s joking until she looks her in the eyes and confirms that no, Katya is deadly serious.  
  
  
“Oh my God, stop. This isn’t happening; not now, not ever, okay? I have to go, goodbye.”  
  
  
Trixie is so flustered at Katya’s persistence; it’s not like she hasn’t had attention like this from women before, but there’s something about the intensity in Katya’s eyes that makes Trixie’s stomach flutter and her brain stutter to a screeching halt.  
  
  
“Well, if you insist. I’ll see you around, Dr Mattel.”  
  
  
Trixie knows that this isn’t the end, not by a long-shot, but that’s a problem for a different day. She’s known of Katya’s existence for less than twenty-four hours, and it's already infuriating in the best way, although she’ll go to her grave before she ever admits that to Katya. Trixie knows she’s fucked.  
  
  
She reaches for the door handle and pushes all her weight forward into it, but the door doesn’t budge. She gives the handle one more shove, determined to elude the latch mechanism; her brain feels fully melted, filled with thoughts of Katya naked and squirming beneath her on the living room floor. Katya clears her throat and Trixie panics that she can read minds.  
  
  
“It’s a pull door, not a push.”  
  
  
“Oh really Katya, you don’t say. Clearly my next plan of action was to try and lift it with my own two hands from the ground up!” Trixie yanks the door handle towards herself and storms out, letting it slam closed behind her and leaving Katya alone in the stairwell.  
  
  
It's going to be a very long placement.  
  
  
  
  
 - - - - -  
  
  
  
  
It’s already lunch-time before Trixie sees Bob again; technically it’s way past a typical lunch hour, but the A&E department experienced an influx of patients at noon and it didn’t stop until half-past three.  
  
  
Trixie and Bob are sat at a small table in the hospital canteen; Trixie’s picking her way through what is apparently macaroni cheese but is more like a cheese flavoured soup with pasta floating in it. Bob keeps glancing up from her phone screen to look at Trixie when she thinks the blonde isn’t looking, and she can tell that she’s dying to ask about what the hell happened with Katya. Trixie doesn’t really mind; they’ve known each other for half a day, but Bob is the type of girl that makes it feel as though they’ve been friends their entire lives.  
  
  
“Go on then, ask me. I can’t deal with the side-long glances any longer, Roberta,” Trixie finally says, pushing her half-eaten plate of macaroni away from her.  
  
  
“I have no idea what you’re on about, Dr Mattel,” Bob jokes, before launching into her very own Spanish inquisition.  
  
  
“Okay, what the hell, how the hell, and when the hell did this happen?”  
  
  
“It’s nothing really. I went to a bar last night, got drunk, picked up a girl. Everything was great; we had sex, we laughed, and she left this morning. I figured that was it, but the world hates me, so of course she’s turned out to be my _fucking boss_!”  
  
  
The cafeteria is busy, but not so busy that Trixie is worried about being overheard, however Bob’s booming laugh does draw a few curious glances from across the room.  
  
  
“Wow, thank you for your support in this trying time,” Trixie says dryly; she hopes Bob can tell that’s she’s being sarcastic and that she isn’t actually mad.  
  
  
“This is hilarious. Has your life always been a lesbian rom-com, Mattel?” Bob jokes, and Trixie laughs and nods, because yes, her life has always been a big, gay comical disaster.  
  
  
Their laughter dies down and Trixie pokes her plastic fork around the yellow mush left on her plate. A group of nurses sit down at the vacant table next to them, chatting animatedly about their children, their husbands and the new beef stew recipe one of them discovered at the weekend. Trixie becomes so absorbed in eavesdropping on their conversation that she misses Bob’s comment, only registering when the other girl begins waving her open palm in front of Trixie’s face.  
  
  
“I said, what are you gonna do about it? About Dr Zamo?”  
  
  
“Well, nothing. I’m cool with it, she’s cool with it. We’ll just move on and pretend like it never happened.”  
  
  
Trixie can’t look Bob in the eye as she says it, can’t even bring herself to believe her own words. That’s the issue; she doesn’t know if she can pretend like it never happened, can’t pretend that she doesn’t have a picture-perfect image of Katya’s perky little tits burning into her mind’s eye every time she sees the blonde’s head in her peripheral vision.   
  
  
“Whatever you say, Mattel, whatever you say…”  
  
  
  
  
\- - - - -  
  
  
  
  
Trixie has twenty minutes left of her shift when it happens. She’s in the linen cupboard looking for an extra blanket for the man in bed ten, when the red phone at the nurses’ station begins to ring.  
  
  
Trixie’s been dreading this moment since she graduated from medical school; the red phone only ever rings if a massive trauma case is on route to the hospital, and the likelihood of the patient in the ambulance surviving is always slim to none. She’s only ever witnessed them before; all the shadowing she did throughout medical school meant that she never had to be directly involved with these cases, so now she’s truly terrified.  
  
  
It’s all hands on deck, but she can’t stop hers from shaking.  
  
  
Nurse Royale answers the call, and quickly notes the details given by the paramedics. Trixie can see Katya, as well as Dr Needles and Dr Velour marching up the ward towards the vacant hospital bay where the trauma patient will go, blue tear-away aprons fastened over their clothes and nitrile gloves already on. Trixie’s reminded of the horsemen of the apocalypse. She can hear the siren of the ambulance in the distance.  
  
  
Trixie’s pager goes off to notify her of the requirement of her presence even though she’s already there, and her heart shoots up into her throat. She grabs an apron and pulls on some gloves, just as the patient is being wheeled in on a gurney through the automatic double-doors of the ambulance bay.  
  
  
Everyone is on him like a flash, but Trixie can’t move. He can’t be much older than she is, from what she can see of his bloody and bruised face. She knows she should be listening to the paramedic’s handover information, but she can’t stop staring at the young man’s face, can’t tear her eyes away from the massive bleeding gashes and his unresponsive eyes staring up at the ceiling above him.  
  
  
Katya’s in charge of co-coordinating the trauma response team. She’s so calm; Trixie can’t understand how she too isn’t freaking out internally, how no one else seems to be panicking like she is. If this boy isn’t already dead, he’s only a stones-throw away from it and Trixie cannot even begin to comprehend that.  
  
  
There are doctors milling about like worker bees in a hive; one shines a little torch into the man’s eyes whilst another connects a multitude of electrical wires to his bare chest. A nurse is preforming chest compressions as another connects a bag valve mask to his face. Katya stands observing and assessing the whole situation, like a stage director watching a well-rehearsed play.  
  
  
Trixie’s yanked out of her trance by the screaming voice of who she can only assume is the boy’s mother. She’s barrelling up from the ambulance bay doors straight towards them, mascara-stained tears streaking down her face and snot bubbling from her nose as she sobs. Luckily, she’s intercepted by one of the nurses before she can get too close to the horrifying scene playing out: Trixie’s thankful for this, prays that this woman never has to see the state of her son. She knows this is impossible, there’s already blood everywhere; on the floor, the nitrile gloves of the medical staff – it’s even on the trainers of some of the doctors and nurses on the frontline. Trixie can’t even tell where the constant stream of blood seems to be pouring from.  
  
  
“Dr Mattel, take over chest compressions from Nurse Edwards please,” Katya says without even looking at Trixie; her eyes haven’t diverted from the situation unfolding in front of her since the man was brought in, but where Trixie can’t look away from the shock of it all, Katya’s laser focus comes from a place of pure professionalism. She doesn’t even flinch at the constant screaming of the boy’s mother.  
  
  
Trixie quickly swaps places with the nurse and begins pounding into the man’s chest to the rhythm she spent five years mastering.  
  
  
She can’t look at his face, at his vacant eyes. She pushes and pushes into the centre of his chest, ignores the fact that the heart monitors behind her are emitting a steady beep rather than continuous little bleeps. She keeps going even when she can hear Katya telling her to stop, that it’s time to call it; that he’s gone. Her hands have a mind of their own, pumping hard and fast, 100 compressions per minute. Trixie doesn’t stop until she sees a hand being placed over her own clasped ones. It’s Katya’s.  
  
  
“Time of death, eight-o-seven,” says Katya, and that’s it.  
  
  
Trixie backs out of the bay as the medical staff begin to remove the wires from the man’s chest and remove the bag valve mask from his mouth. She can still hear his mother crying, can see her collapsed into a sobbing heap in the arms of a nurse who’s name she doesn’t know.  
  
  
Trixie thinks she’s going to be sick. She makes towards the ambulance bay doors and practically runs out of them in her scrubs with her blood-covered little apron still tied around her, health and safety protocol be damned. She makes it to some shrubbery before she hunches over, sweaty palms braced on her thighs. She retches and retches, but nothing comes up except for a tiny bit of saliva that runs over her plump bottom lip and down her chin. She feels like she can’t breathe and her eyes sting from retching and held back tears.  
  
  
She feels a hand on her back and knows it’s Katya; she can see the other woman’s black pumps next to her own trainer-clad feet. Katya rubs soothing circles up and down Trixie’s back, and pulls the strands of her hair that have come loose from her ponytail back from her face. Trixie gulps in breaths like a drowning man coming up for air and her sobs become hiccups.  
  
  
She reaches a hand up from her thigh to grasp at Katya’s free hand.  
  
  
“Shh, shh, you’re okay. The first one is always the hardest,” Katya says calmly and quietly as she continues rubbing her hand up Trixie’s back. All Trixie can do is grasp Katya’s hand tighter in her own.  
  
  
Her breathing begins to calm, and she releases her grasp on Katya, uses her hand to wipe the drool from her chin as she stands back upright. She looks up and Katya’s staring at her intently; where she looked at Trixie with a fire in her eyes hours earlier, those embers are long since dead and now Katya just looks concerned.  
  
  
“You okay?” Katya asks out into the light summer night.  
  
  
“Yeah, I’m fine.” She knows it’s a lie, and so does Katya, but she doesn’t know what else to say. How can she tell Katya that was the most traumatic thing she’s ever witnessed? It’s not her tragedy to mourn; a mother just watched her son die. Trixie feels as though she doesn’t get to be affected by it; she isn’t eligible to grieve the youthful naivety she just lost or the life snuffed out on a hospital bed.  
  
  
Katya nods and bites her bottom lip, eyes still locked on Trixie’s.  
  
  
“Well, your shift finished a quarter of an hour ago. I, uh – I could drive you home, if you want?” Katya offers, and Trixie wants to accept the offer so badly, but she also wants to be as far away from Katya as possible; she can’t believe this woman, practically a stranger, just had to witness her in such a state.  
  
  
“No, it’s fine, I have a bike. I uh – yeah, sorry about that. I should get going,” Trixie turns to walk back to the hospital, “ – but thanks Katya, I’ll see you around.” She walks back into the A&E department, leaving Katya outside in the warm summer breeze as the fantastically orange sun begins to set.  
  
  
  
  
 - - - - -  
  
  
  
  
Trixie cycles home in a daze. She chains her bike back up to the gutter, unlocks her front door and strips off her clothes in the hallway. She trudges upstairs to her bathroom, sits down in her shower and cries as the cold spray hits her body.


	3. now i don't hardly know her, but i think i could love her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You know, when I said take me somewhere nice, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Trixie says, speaking over the gentle buzz of the golden oldies radio channel playing from the speaker in the car._
> 
>  
> 
> _“You mean to tell me super-store car parks don’t get you going?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to another instalment of the hospital AU that has almost nothing to do with a hospital. 
> 
> this is a pretty dialogue heavy chapter so apologies for that, but i hope you enjoy! as always all mistakes are my own (i edited this at 5.30am so there may be a lot lol)
> 
> also thank you all so much for your wonderful comments on this so far, they really do make my day!

It’s been six days since The Incident, as Trixie has taken to calling it, and she is definitely, one hundred percent, not actively avoiding Katya. The fact that she’s currently hiding in the linen closet because she knows Katya is standing at the nurses’ station just outside of the cupboard is simply coincidental.  
  
Bob keeps telling her that it’s nothing to be embarrassed about, and whilst Trixie appreciates the sentiment, she’s still mortified. Plus, Bob luckily hasn’t had to deal with anyone literally dying at her hands yet; the worst she’s experienced so far is dodging the projectile vomit of a two-year-old with Norovirus and the tiniest part of Trixie guiltily resents her for it.  
  
It’s not just the fact that out of all the people in the hospital that came running to her rescue, it just so happened to be the one person she’d slept with less than twenty-four hours prior to that – it’s the fact that she liked it, liked having Katya’s hands rub soothing circles on her back and hold her hair back as she retched. She tries to tell herself she would have felt the same if it were Bob, that the slight sense of familiarity was what she needed in that moment, but she knows she’s lying to herself.  
  
Her pager goes off and Trixie is swiftly reminded that she can’t hide in the linen closet forever. She opens the door and surveys the ward as quick as she can, searching for any sign of Katya’s blonde hair or her chunky glasses. When she thinks the coast is clear, she steps out and power walks her way across to the nurses’ station like she only has one eight count to get there. She picks up her patient chart and heads on over to see what minor injuries and ailments the day has to offer her, the coast clear for now.  
  
  
\- - - - -  
  
  
Trixie’s in the hospital cafeteria eating an apple and minding her own business, flicking through Instagram on her phone. The day has been easy so far; it’s been remarkably quiet, and she’s managed to take her lunch break on time for once. The same however cannot be said for Bob, who is currently up to her elbows in plaster of Paris trying to aid the nurses in patching up and young boys fractured ankle. Trixie’s gotten so used to taking her breaks with Bob that she can’t help but feel lonely, wants the other woman to be there to gossip with her about trash reality TV and the insane patient they had to admit yesterday evening.  
  
She’s just about to watch a video promising her 15 nail-art hacks that she’ll never be able to do herself thanks to health and safety regulations, when she sees Katya join the line to buy a coffee. Trixie goes into panic mode and almost chokes on a mouthful of half-chewed apple. She slumps down further into the hard-plastic seat and draws her phone up in front of her face, however Katya has already seen her and is waving across the cafeteria at her. Trixie waves back limply, apple still grasped in her palm.  
  
She thinks about getting up and leaving, hoping that Katya will just leave it at a wave, but then she’s reminded that the world hates her as Katya begins to walk over, two disposable coffee cups in hand. Her stethoscope swings around her neck and her little black pencil skirt with a deep red sweater tucked into it rides further up her thighs with every step she takes. Trixie thinks she looks like a model from a ninety’s runway, even if she is about a foot too short to fully fit the fantasy.  
  
Trixie barely has time to check her teeth in her phone screen for rogue pieces of chewed apple before Katya reaches her table and places one of the coffees in front of Trixie.  
  
“I got you a coffee. I didn’t know how you like it so, uh—I just got some of everything.”  
  
Katya sits in the chair opposite Trixie and pulls out five little sachets of sugar and three mini tubs of milk from her skirt pocket, placing them on the table and pushing them towards Trixie.  
  
“Uh, thanks,” is the stunning response Katya receives from Trixie. Trixie realises her tone sounds ungrateful and tries to smile at Katya, but it comes out as more of a grimace than anything else. She puts two of the sugars and all the milk in her coffee and swishes it around in the cup – Katya didn’t bring any of the wooden stirrers they have at the counter over with her.  
  
Neither of them speaks and Trixie occupies herself with taking a sip of her still too hot coffee, staring around the cafeteria at anything other than Katya.  
  
“Why have you been avoiding me, Dr Mattel?”  
  
“I have no idea what you’re on about, Dr Zamolodchikova,” replies Trixie, knowing full well that she’s lying. Katya knows it’s a lie too, and fixes Trixie with a look as if to say _Oh come off it_.  
  
“Trixie you haven’t even looked me in the eye since last week. I know I maybe came on a bit strong, and for that I apologise… but please don’t feel awkward around me,” Katya says quickly and quietly, stopping to sip her own coffee, “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, I just—ah, I think I just read the situation wrong, y’know?” Katya looks up from her coffee cup at Trixie and Trixie is once again remined just how vibrant the woman’s eyes are.  
  
Trixie quickly realises that the coffee is a peace offering from Katya and suddenly she feels guilty for avoiding her. She wants to explain to Katya what the situation is, but she can’t; how does she even begin to tell Katya that she can’t bring herself to speak to her because Katya makes her feel things she hasn’t felt in a _long_ time, feelings that she doesn’t really understand – she barely even knows Katya, after all.  
  
Instead of explaining, she lies. Again.  
  
“I haven’t been avoiding you, I promise. I just uh—I don’t think we should be uh, friends. That’s all.”  
  
She regrets it as soon as she’s said it. Trixie _wants_ Katya; she wants to get to know her, to figure out what makes her laugh, to discover what shampoo she uses, she wants to take her out for breakfast on a Sunday morning. But she knows that she can’t. Trixie has worked so hard for this career, worked so hard to become the doctor she now is, and she can’t bring herself to gamble it all on a stranger – a beautiful and caring stranger, but a stranger none the less. Trixie figures a clean break is best – or, as clean a break as possible when she’ll have to work with Katya every day for the remainder of her rotation.  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’m sorry you feel that way, but I’m glad you told me. You’re a really cool gal, Trixie Mattel, and I wish things could have been different,” Katya says and gives Trixie the tiniest half-smile. She looks so sad and it makes Trixie’s heart ache. Trixie has no idea what to say when she goes to speak, but Katya interrupts before she can formulate a sentence.  
  
“Anyway, I better be off. I only came for a coffee. I’ll see you back on the ward Dr Mattel,” Katya hurries out.  
  
Trixie can tell she’s hurt her because she walks away without even lifting her coffee from the table.  
  
  
\- - - - -  
  
  
It’s only just gone quarter past midnight and Trixie is wrecked. She’s fully gone and she knows it, but everyone else at the party is either in the same boat or have been in the boat and are now drunkenly drowning in a metaphorical sea of wine and mixed spirits.  
  
She’s out on her front porch; her house is so filled with people (half of them she doesn’t even recognise) that party-goers have started to spill out of the front door and are dancing under the moonlight on her rickety porch landing. Someone’s blasting a song Trixie doesn’t know from her little Bluetooth speaker and she’s trying her best to dance along whilst taking big swigs from her bottle of luke-warm white wine that she’s clinging onto for dear life. The wine tastes horrendous but she stopped noticing about six mouthfuls ago, so now it slips down easily despite the slight burning sensation it leaves in her throat.  
  
The party hadn’t been Trixie’s idea – her first working week as a fully-fledged, stethoscope carrying, prescription writing doctor had completely wiped her out and she was fully prepared to spend her two days off work wrapped up in bed blissfully unaware of the world outside of her bedroom, but Bob had had other ideas. Bob had spent the entirety of their day shift wearing down Trixie’s resolve until she had finally caved and agreed to hold the party, and as it turns out, word travels fast at an inner-city hospital – Trixie’s positive that every member of staff not required on the night shift is either currently dancing the night away in her home, crying in her bathroom or drunkenly passed out on her second-hand patio furniture.  
  
Everyone except Katya.  
  
Trixie spent the early part of the evening convincing herself that she was unfazed, that her heart didn’t sink a little further into her chest every time the door opened, revealing a new guest who wasn’t Katya. The drunker she gets however, the more it niggles at her. There are so many people there from so many different departments that Trixie knows it’s impossible that Katya didn’t hear about the party. She figures Katya has better things to be doing than drinking cheap alcohol in the presence of the same people she spends every day working with. Better things involving more nameless and faceless drunken girls in bars, but it’s whatever. Trixie is _so_ not bothered. Totally and completely unfazed. It’s better this way – she’d told Katya herself that she didn’t think they should be friends, so Katya would have no reason to attend the last-minute soiree. Trixie has never regretted her big, stupid mouth more than she has tonight and now the guilt is eating away at her.  
  
Trixie’s dancing is way off, totally countering the beat of the music booming from her front room, but she’s too drunk to care. One of her flip-flops keeps catching in the loose wood panelling of the porch and her loose peach dress billows up around her waist every time the night wind blows, revealing her underwear that’s definitely seen better days; the white lace has turned grey over time and there’s an ever-widening hole ripped in at the waistband. Everyone around her is too drunk to notice, and Trixie is too drunk to care. She’ll toss them in the bin tomorrow.  
  
“Oi, Mattel!”  
  
Trixie swings her head round like she’s a new-born with no control over her skull and a weak neck; her big blonde curls whip her in the face and stick to her tacky lip-gloss. Bob’s hanging out of the open bay-window holding one of Trixie’s cheap wine-glasses filled with god only knows what. “We’re about to get a round of beer pong going, you in?”  
  
She considers it for a second and then her brain catches up and reminds her that she doesn’t actually like beer at the best of times, never mind luke-warm beer that she and Bob got for dirt cheap prices.  
  
“Nah, I’m good. But please, for the love of God Roberta, don’t smash any of my glasses. Those cost me 89p each from IKEA,” she replies, pointing a finger at Bob and pretending to be serious.  
  
Bob flips her off and blows her a kiss right after it, laughing as she ducks back inside the window. Trixie does a little twirl, letting her dress ruffle out around her thighs and then plonks herself down a little too forcefully onto her porch steps. The rough wood prickles her bare thighs but it’s not painful enough for her to consider standing back up. Trixie stares up at the inky sky above her, pointing out the constellations to no one but herself. She’s surprised at how well she can see them considering how close to the city centre she is; it reminds her of home, and her childhood, and how she would lie outside in the fields for hours on end with her siblings marvelling at the sky above them.  
  
Trixie’s so absorbed in her wine-induced dreaming that she doesn’t notice the car pulling up in front of her house, doesn’t notice as Katya rolls down the window, doesn’t hear her over the thumping bass of the music spilling out from her living room. Trixie doesn’t notice Katya until the woman is walking directly up the path towards her. She’s wearing a khaki green smock dress that’s wrinkled slightly from sitting in the car, with orange Birkenstocks and bright blue polish on her toenails. Trixie hates it on sight; if the wine wasn’t already making her head hurt, Katya’s outfit would have done the job.  
  
Katya doesn’t say anything as she sits down by Trixie on the porch steps and neither does Trixie. Katya takes in the situation around her, her drunk co-workers spilling out of Trixie’s home, the empty beer cans littering the garden and an intoxicated Trixie unconsciously swaying from side-to-side beside her.  
  
“I know you said we couldn’t be friends, but I can’t believe you didn’t invite me to your party, yet you invited Needles,” chuckles Katya, turning to face Trixie.  
  
“Technically, Dr Zamo-blah-blah, I didn’t invite anyone. This is all Bob’s doing,” Trixie replies; she would sound almost indignant if it wasn’t for her slight drunken slurring. Even she was shocked by Bob’s brazen confidence in inviting Dr Needles to the party. She was shocked even more by her attendance, although Trixie’s seen her eyeballing her suspiciously throughout the night and figures that it’s been more of a reconnaissance mission than a social engagement for Dr Needles.  
  
“Well, I’m heart broken, Tallulah. The _shame_ of having to hear about this second hand has ruined me, I might never recover.” Katya makes a show of pretending to be shot in the heart, dramatically clutching her hands over her breasts and throwing herself back so hard that Trixie feels the thud of her head knocking against the wood. Her little smock rides up her thighs as she lies back, and Trixie can see the soft hairs there illuminated by the moonlight.  
  
Trixie has to give it to Katya for bouncing back so quickly from being the girl with the hurt eyes in the cafeteria earlier - if the shoe had been on the other foot, Trixie would want nothing to do with Katya.  
  
“Well you’re here now, aren’t you?” Trixie says, still staring at Katya’s thighs.  
  
“If only by the grace of God, yes I am,” Katya replies, hauling herself back up into a sitting position as Trixie tries to cover her staring by chugging down the remainder of her wine.  
  
“You’ll hate yourself in the morning for that move, Mattel,” Katya laughs, taking the now empty wine bottle from Trixie and throwing out onto the grass to lie with the other discarded cans and bottles.  
  
“What makes you think I don’t already hate myself wildly?” Trixie asks Katya, staring at her with big, blown out pupils. Katya’s face falls and Trixie realises the other woman thinks she’s being serious. “Look, what you said earlier, I’m not bothered…”  
  
“Oh my god, that was a joke! I do not hate myself,” Trixie shouts too loudly and starts laughing hysterically, like she’s just made the funniest joke in the world but really she just feels awkward at the mention of their earlier conversation and her brain short circuits. Katya looks at her bemused before she joins in laughing too.  
  
The laughter dies down and they sit in a slightly awkward silence. Someone’s taken control of the music and now the opening notes of Wham’s Freedom blast out into the night around them. George has gotten to the first chorus before Trixie decides to open her mouth again.  
  
“So. What’s brought you to my neck of the woods anyway?”  
  
“Oh, I was just passing through and thought I’d stop by. Heard a rumour that a beautiful lady was throwing a rager of a party and decided I just _had_ to check it out,” Katya replies and for as drunk as she feels, Trixie doesn’t miss Katya’s ‘beautiful lady’ comment; she also doesn’t miss how it makes her insides feel warmer than all the throat-burning wine she’s drank tonight has.  
  
“Oh, so I’m beautiful am I?” Trixie teases, twirling her hair in an attempt to be cute but all she succeeds in doing is tangling the strands around her pointer finger. Trixie knows she’s giving off mixed signals after her earlier conversation with Katya, but she’s drunk and is a slut for attention even when stone cold sober. She’s also secretly glad Bob convinced her to throw this party after all; sober Trixie would have clammed up at Katya’s casual comment.  
  
“Shut up, Mattel,” laughs Katya as she shoves Trixie in the shoulder; the blow is weak, but it knocks Trixie off kilter and Katya has to reach out to grab her arm before she slides clean off the porch.  
  
“Jesus Christ, how much have you had tonight?” Katya implores jokingly, but Trixie can hear the subtle undertones of concern in her voice.  
  
Trixie’s trying to formulate a witty reply when they’re interrupted by a crying scrub nurse shoving past the two of them as her friends chase her down Trixie’s little garden.  
  
“Let’s get out of here, Katya,” Trixie says suddenly, surprised by her own boldness; it’s like the alcohol has dissolved any verbal filter she had.  
  
“What? There’s like, fifty people in your house right now Trixie,” Katya turns to her looking perplexed, gesturing behind her at the house in question.  
  
“And? It’ll still be here when I get back,” Trixie says resolutely, arms crossed over her chest pushing her breasts up towards her chin.  
  
“Fine. Where would you like to go at this late hour, Trixie Mattel?” Katya chuckles as she swings her car key around her finger.  
  
“Anywhere. Take me some place nice, Katya.”  
  
  
\- - - - -  
  
  
Katya ends up driving them to a deserted supermarket car park on the outskirts of town.  
  
Trixie doesn’t really know much about cars at the best of times, and she knows even less now that her mind is fuzzy with wine, but she does know that Katya’s car is expensive. Despite all the rubbish that litters the back seats and the footwells, Trixie can tell from the upholstery that the car must have been pricey, and she keeps running her palm along the cool strip of leather seat not eclipsed by her wide thighs.  
  
“You know, when I said take me somewhere nice, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Trixie says, speaking over the gentle buzz of the golden oldies radio channel playing from the speaker in the car.  
  
“You mean to tell me super-store car parks don’t get you going?” Katya says deadly serious, until she turns to look at Trixie and bursts out into a raspy laugh. “I know it doesn’t seem like much, but just trust me okay? Hop out of the car,” Katya says, as she reaches into the backseat for a denim jacket, throwing it on over her dress.  
  
Trixie gets out of the car and follows Katya as she walks around to the front of her car. Katya puts her hands flat on the bonnet and jumps up onto it, landing on her knees before swivelling around to sit, gesturing for Trixie to hop up and join her. Trixie tries but her co-ordination is a mess; she bangs her knee off the bumper and her hands slide down it making a screeching noise as they go. Katya smirks and holds her arms out to Trixie, helping to haul her up onto the bonnet. Katya lies back, legs dangling off the edge of the car, her sandals bumping against the metal as she stares up at the sky above. Trixie remains upright, cold from the night air and a little confused about what’s happening.  
  
“I come out here sometimes to look at the stars. You can see them better here than in the city,” Katya clarifies as she folds her arms under her head. The moonlight makes her skin look blue and Trixie can see the shadows her long eyelashes cast on her cheekbones.  
  
Trixie lies down and joins Katya. Lying side-by-side and staring at the stars, Trixie feels like a teenager again. They lie there staring up at the sky in silence until Trixie can’t take it anymore; she’s beginning to sober up and the cold is biting at her goose-fleshed skin.  
  
“Katya?”  
  
“Mmm?”  
  
“Why do you like me so much? I’m horrible to you,” Trixie’s throat is dry and her voice cracks slightly.  
  
“Honestly? I don’t know.” Katya keeps her eyes focused on the stars above them, and _oh_ , Trixie wasn’t expecting that. She wasn’t expecting some wild declaration of undying love either, but she was expecting _something_. When Trixie doesn’t reply, Katya turns over onto her side to face her.  
  
“At the risk of sounding like we’re in a coming-of-age movie, there’s just something about you and I don’t know what it is. But I know that I like it, despite everything,” Katya says it so honestly that it makes Trixie want to laugh like she sometimes does when she feels awkward or put on the spot.  
  
“Now let me ask you a question,” Katya continues, “why do you dislike me so much?”  
  
Trixie’s taken aback by the bluntness of the question, although she understands completely where Katya’s coming from; she’s been avoiding her for days and even when she did happen to bump into her, she wasn’t exactly the friendliest. Like, she literally told her that they couldn’t be friends. Trixie feels sick thinking back to their conversation in the cafeteria, but she thinks it might just be the alcohol.  
  
“That’s—that’s not the case Katya, I promise,” Trixie stutters, propping her head up on her hand to look Katya in the eyes, ignoring her slightly spinning vision. “You really think I don’t like you?” Trixie asks; it's gotten so cold that she can see her breath making puffs of steam in front of her.  
  
“Well, you didn’t really give me much cause to think otherwise – you literally told me we can’t be friends, plus you’re not as stealthy as you think Mattel, I’ve seen you going into that linen closet,” Katya sounds genuinely hurt and Trixie is mortified by her own behaviour, somehow even more-so than she was earlier. She feels crestfallen and it must show on her face, even if she has no real right to, because Katya starts laughing quietly. “ _And_ _then_ you didn’t invite me to your big, cool-girl house party…” Trixie rolls closer to Katya and socks her in the clavicle lightly.  
  
“Oh my god, for the _last time_ I didn’t invite anyone! Bob did! This party was thrown against my will,” Trixie’s laughing too now, her hand still propping up her head mushing her fat cheek as she giggles. Katya’s still laughing, and Trixie feels oddly content, laughing into the silent night around the pair of them and looking at Katya’s face that’s gone blotchy red with her laughter.  
  
Their excitement over nothing dies down and Katya’s still looking at her. Her gaze is intense; it makes Trixie feel like she’s on fire in the best way. Katya reaches out to push one of Trixie’s rogue curls back behind her ear, and for a second Trixie thinks Katya is going to kiss her, despite everything. Trixie closes her eyes in anticipation of it, but the kiss never comes.  
  
“I think we should get you back home, make sure the revellers haven’t burned your house to the ground yet,” says Katya. Trixie opens her eyes and tries to hide her disappointment from Katya. Logically she knows there’s no reason why Katya would kiss her – she hasn’t given the woman any cause to think that she’s even remotely interested in her and she’s pretty sure she smells like a brewery right now, but she’s still disappointed even if she knows that it’s selfish. Katya isn’t a mind reader and Trixie has been the exact opposite of transparent.  
  
  
\- - - - -  
  
  
  
They drive back to Trixie’s in relative silence, punctuated by the low hum of the radio and the clicks of the indicator light. They reach Trixie’s house and the party has died a death; Maxine’s asleep on Trixie’s porch swing and the music has gone from deafening to non-existent, although Trixie can see through the window that a few stragglers are still standing and chatting in her living room.  
  
Katya turns the engine off and spins to face Trixie.  
  
“Tonight was nice,” Katya almost whispers.  
  
“Yeah, it was. Look, I want to apologise for earlier. I do want to be your friend Katya,” Trixie replies, feeling like a ten-year-old apologising for a playground argument and not the adult she is, trying to make amends for her words.  
  
Katya doesn’t say anything, but she reaches her hand across the console separating her seat from Trixie’s and hooks her pinkie finger with Trixie’s. Trixie looks at their joint fingers, Katya’s so much smaller than hers, before she looks back at Katya.  
  
“Do you want to come in for a bit? I can make us a coffee, if you want,” Trixie asks Katya.  
  
“No, I better not – I’m on the swing shift, and the suns about to make its appearance for the day,” Trixie looks at the time on her watch and realises that it’s almost 4am, “Thanks for the offer though, maybe another time.”  
  
Trixie nods and uses the hand not entwined with Katya’s to open the door. She tells herself to just get out of the car and go to bed before she does something stupid, but her body and mind have never really been in synch with one another, working like two cogs from different machines. Before she can register what she’s doing, she’s leaning forward across the console, across their conjoined fingers, towards Katya.  
  
It's more of a peck than a kiss at first; close mouthed with chapped lips on glossed ones, but Katya doesn’t pull away and neither does Trixie. It’s an awkward angle leaning across the console, but Trixie doesn’t really notice or care. Their closed mouths move against each other and their pinkie fingers lie still intertwined between them. Katya uses her free hand to push Trixie’s cascading hair back behind her ear once again before she pulls away.  
  
Trixie comes back to herself and begins to think up an excuse: _sorry, I’m drunk and an idiot_ or _I had an out of body experience_ , but as she looks up she sees that Katya has got the tiniest smirk on her face as she looks down at their joined hands. Her cheeks are flushed pink, and Trixie knows that it can’t be from the cold the open passenger door is letting into the car. It makes Trixie want to melt, makes her believe that maybe they could actually just forget that the conversation in the cafeteria ever happened, as naive as the notion is.  
  
“Goodnight, Katya,” Trixie whispers as she gently tugs her pinkie free from Katya’s and climbs out of the car. Katya grins at Trixie with all her white teeth on show before Trixie closes the car door and walks up her garden path, bracing herself for the damage her house has endured in her absence.


End file.
